According to his website, Lomborg.com, Bjorn Lomborg is also a visiting professor at the Copenhagen Business School. He received his Ph. D. in Political Science at the University of Copenhagen in 1994. [1]

Lomborg is best known as the author of The Skeptical Environmentalist and Cool It, two books that downplay the risks of global warming. Despite these publications, Lomborg does not have a background in climate science and has published no peer-reviewed articles on climate change.

Lomborg is listed as a ”Speaker” by The Sweeney Agency, which works to make “the speaking business more client focused,” by booking speakers for clients “based solely on [their] needs.” The Sweeney Agency describes Lomborg as an “Author and Speaker on the Environment and Climate Change,” noting that one of the topics Lomborg speaks about is “The Truth About Global Warming”: [3]

“This thought-provoking talk is based on Dr. Lomborg's bestselling book and film, Cool It. Here, Lomborg will demonstrate how we're often told very one-sided and exaggerated claims about the environment and climate change, leading to unwarranted panic, instead of rationally assessing where and how we can do the most good. He argues that to tackle global warming we need smarter solutions focused on getting long-term solutions like cost-competitive renewables and that many of the impacts of global warming would be better addressed through adaptation.” [3]

Lomborg-errors.dk is a website focused on documenting his errors, although it does not appear to have been recently updated. It also maintains a timeline documenting the events leading to Lomborg's fame, and how he is regarded among his fellow Danes. [4]

Stance on Climate Change

In a 2010 report in The Guardian, Lomborg acknowledged that global warming is “a challenge that humanity must confront.” Lomborg goes as far as calling for a carbon tax and a $100 billion investment in clean technologies. [5]

However, in his new book Smart Solutions to Climate Change, Lomborg argues that it would be too expensive to implement any major carbon reduction policy, and that “drastic carbon cuts would be the poorest way to respond to global warming.” [6]

Green Energy

In what appears contradictory, Lomborg then advocates for investments in green energy technologies, “…At the same time, wealthy Western nations must step up investments into research and development in green energy technologies to ensure that cleaner energy eventually becomes so cheap that everyone will want it.” [8], [9]

Geo-Engineering

Lomborg has promoted the controversial idea of geo-engineering to address climate change. In one instance, Lomborg envisioned a fleet of 1900 robotic ships that will patrol the ocean while releasing spouts of ocean water to reflect the sun's rays in an attempt to reduce global warming. [11], [12]

Geoengineering research proponent Ken Caldeira has said “the vision of Lomborg’s Climate Consensus is 'a dystopic world out of a science fiction story … Geoengineering is not an alternative to carbon emissions reductions … If emissions keep going up and up, and you use geoengineering as a way to deal with it, it's pretty clear the endgame of that process is pretty ugly'.” [13]

Key Quotes

“The new report has no comparison of the costs and benefits of climate targets. Mr. Nordhaus’s most recent estimate, published in August, is that the ‘optimal’ outcome with a moderate carbon tax is a rise of about 6.3 degrees Fahrenheit by the end of the century. Reducing temperature rises by more would result in higher costs than benefits, potentially causing the world a $50 trillion loss.”

“By the United Nations’ own estimates, all of the promised cuts up to 2030 will reduce emissions by less than 1 per cent of what would be needed to keep temperature rises under 2C. Paris will deliver far less than politicians promise and cost more than most people are willing to pay.”

June, 2016

“[J]ust like every other issue, there's both positives and negatives to global warming. Overall, and in the long run, the negatives will outweigh the positives, but there is a lot of positives to global warming right now.” [70]

“Climate change is a genuine problem that will eventually be a net detriment to society. Gradually rising temperatures across decades will increase the number of hot days and heat waves. If humans make no attempts whatsoever to adapt—a curious assumption that the report inexplicably relies on almost throughout—the total number of heat-related deaths will rise. But correspondingly, climate change will also reduce the number of cold days and cold spells. That will cut the total number of cold-related deaths.” [14]

“In pushing too hard for the case that global warming is universally bad for everything, the administration’s report undermines the reasonable case for climate action. Focusing on only the bad side of the ledger destroys academic and political credibility.”[14]

“Pursuing this 2C target is very costly and not guaranteed to be successful. Much better, then, to target a maximum of, say, 3C rise, which will cost about $40 trillion but avoid most damages.

“If we insist on 2C, we will pay an extra $60,000 billion, but only prevent a stream of $100 billion damages that begins in 70 to 80 years. Moreover, all of these estimates assume cost-effective climate policies, whereas in real life they have often become many times more expensive.” [15]

April 29, 2014

In an opinion piece written by Lomborg in The Australian entitled, “Renewables pave path to poverty,” Lomborg encourages everyone engaged in the debate [of Australia's Renewable Energy Target (RET)] to “recognise:” [16]

“The Australian government recently released an issues paper for the review of the renewable energy target. What everyone engaged in this debate should recognise is that policies such as the carbon tax and the RET have contributed to household electricity costs rising 110 per cent in the past five years, hitting the poor the hardest.” [16]

Further on, he states:

“In 1971, 40 per cent of China’s energy came from renewables. Since then it has lifted 680 million people out of poverty using coal. Today, China gets a trifling 0.23 per cent of its energy from wind and solar. Africa gets 50 per cent of its energy today from ­renewables — and remains poor. New analysis from the Centre for Global Development shows that, investing in renewables, we can pull one person out of poverty for about $US500. But, using gas electrification, we could quadruple that. By ­focusing on our climate concerns, we deliberately choose to leave more than three out of four people in darkness and poverty. Addressing global warming requires long-term innovation that makes green energy affordable. Until then, wasting enormous sums of money at the expense of the world’s poor is no solution at all.” [16]

February, 2014

“A new paper by Todd Moss and Ben Leo from the nonprofit think tank, Center for Global Development, puts it very clearly. If Obama spends the next $10 billion on gas electrification, he can help lift 90 million people out of poverty. If he only uses renewables, the same $10 billion can help just 20 million-27 million people. Using renewables, we will deliberately choose to leave more than 60 million people in darkness and poverty…Our development aid should be used to help 60 million more people out of poverty, not as a tool to make us feel virtuous about facile, green choices.” [17]

December, 2013

In an op-ed in The New York Times, Lomborg writes:

“There’s no question that burning fossil fuels is leading to a warmer climate and that addressing this problem is important. But doing so is a question of timing and priority. For many parts of the world, fossil fuels are still vital and will be for the next few decades, because they are the only means to lift people out of the smoke and darkness of energy poverty.” [9]

9:30-10:20 “If you look at the time period from 1900 to 2050, surprisingly, for a lot of people, the net impact of most global warming was actually positive. That's because CO2 is actually fertilizer, that means it increases our agricultural production. Of course, in the long run increasing temperatures is also going to reduce agricultural production. We will also see more people die from heat, but many more people will avoid to die from cold, again with moderate global warming. We are also seeing the lower costs of heating outweigh the extra costs of cooling. So, actually, if you look at what the cost is [of global warming] it turns out to be a slight negative around 1900 at about 0.5% and across the most of the century, mostly a negative.” [18]

March, 2007

“We have to ask ourselves: what do we want to do first? Do we want to focus on cutting CO2, at fairly high costs and doing fairly little good a hundred years from now? Or would we rather want to fix some of the many obvious problems in the world, where we could do a lot more good and do it now?” [19]

Key Deeds

December 6, 2018

Lomborg issued a critical assessment of the COP-24 climate summit by claiming that the IPCC’s stated goal of limiting global temperature increase to less than 1.5 degrees Celsius is “infeasible and unrealistic.” He also stated that abiding by the Paris agreement to meet this goal would negatively affect global GDP growth to the tune of up to $2 trillion annually after 2030 while having a negligible impact on temperature reduction. [97]

Lomborg also criticized news reporting of the U.S. Climate Assessment, released by the Trump administration the day after Thanksgiving, as portraying a bleaker picture than the report actually revealed. The true cost to the global economy, from Lomborg’s perspective, would come not from extreme weather events and increased mortality rates, but from the imposition of “immature energy sources” to replace fossil fuels. [97]

Minimizing the effect that rising global temperatures will have on mortality rates, Lomborg said:

“It is true more people die when it is unusually hot, but lives are not shorter in hotter places. (Otherwise, everyone would move from Texas to Alaska). Studies of migrants show people adapt quickly, within weeks. They also take actions like getting an air conditioner or adapting their houses that reduce their risk of overheating.” [97]

The IER article, giving a hat tip to David Henderson, pointed to research done by Nordhaus in 2007. However, in a more recent discussion paper from 2016, using an updated 2016 DICE model, Nordhaus “confirms past estimates of likely rapid climate change over the next century if there are not major climate-change policies.” [95]

In his 2016 paper’s introduction, Nordhaus wrote:

“[W]e must take stock of what we know now as well as the implications of our actions. And the bottom line here is that this most recent taking stock has more bad news than good news, and that the need for policies to slow climate change are more and not less pressing.”

The August 2018 revision of Nordhaus’s paper that Lomborg appears to be citing includes the identical paragraph as above. In his paper, Nordhaus also notes that uncertainties surrounding the damages of climate change make it more important to act sooner and with stronger policies: [96]

“The ranges of uncertainty for future emissions, concentrations, temperature, and damages are extremely large. However, this does not reduce the urgency of taking strong climate change policies today. When taking uncertainties into account, the desirable strength of policy (as measured by the social cost of carbon or the optimal carbon tax) would increase, not decrease,” Nordhaus wrote.

July 14 2018

Lomborg published an article in The Australian criticising the Paris Agreement on climate change. In the article, he argues that:

“The Paris treaty, fully implemented, would achieve one hundredth of the reduction to 2C (a level at which there are still significant impacts), and hence achieve benefits worth perhaps only one tenth of 1 per cent of global GDP 100 years from now”.

Lomborg's figures are based on a single study by Professor Richard Tol, an academic formally associated with the UK's premier climate science denial campaign group, the Global Warming Policy Foundation — as pointed out in a blog post by Bob Ward of the London School of Economics' Grantham Institute. Ward points out many other errors in Lomborg's analysis including that the Paris Agreement is not legally binding (it is), that the target to keep warming to 1.5 degrees is out of reach (many academics have concluded the target is still possible), and that coal will be cheaper than renewable energy in 2040 (in contrast with generally conservative International Energy Agency projections).

January 4, 2018

“Climate-Change Policies Can Be Punishing for the Poor,” an article by Lomborg in The Wall Street Journal, suggests that climate policies “bear an unfair burden” on “the rich world’s energy poor.” Lomborg claims the often-repeated talking point that “Policies aimed at addressing climate change can easily end up punishing the poor,” pointing a finger at Germany and citing a study by the fossil-fuel-funded Institute for Energy Research (IER), claiming that renewable energy targets and emissions caps have resulted in “energy poverty.” [91]

September 7, 2017

“Talking about climate is confusing, causally incorrect and diverts important resources away from more effective interventions,” Lomborg wrote in an article titled “The Climate-Change Distraction” at The Wall Street Journal. [85]

According to Lomborg, “Climate change has been blamed for a dizzying array of absurd woes from the dwindling number of customers at Bulgarian brothels to the death of the Loch Ness monster” as well as “the recent assertion by Unicef’s Bangladesh head of mission that climate change leads to an increase in child marriages.” [85]

“Focusing on what we could achieve in the future through global-warming policies takes our attention away from what we could accomplish today,” Lomborg wrote, using the spread of malaria-carrying mosquitoes as an example. [85]

According to the IPA's media release, “Climate Change: The Facts 2017 contains 22 essays by internationally-renowned experts and commentators, including Dr Bjorn Lomborg, Dr Matt Ridley, Professor Peter Ridd, Dr Willie Soon, Dr Ian Plimer, Dr Roy Spencer, and literary giant Clive James. The volume is edited by Dr Jennifer Marohasy, Senior Fellow at the Institute of Public Affairs. Fourteen of the contributors currently hold or have held positions at a university or a scientific research organisation.” [84]

“Global annual carbon emission reduction targets for example, 2°C reduction below preindustrial level are extremely costly compared to benefits due to a lack of low-carbon energy sources. Returns less than one dollar for every dollar spent.” [82]

In May, 2017, The Guardian reported that experts had rejected Lomborg's claims, noting that the 2014 paper that Lomborg had based his claim on had underestimated the potential harm of CO2 exceeding 450 parts per million, and also has not taken into account recent advances in renewable energy technology. [83]

The 2014 paper's author, Isabel Galiana, herself said that the “the paper does not explicitly undertake a benefit/cost analysis of keeping climate change to two degrees,” and also noted that if certain “tipping points” were passed, then climate-change induced damage could also increase. [83]

Peter Howard, a Climate economist and economics director at New York University’s Institute for Policy Integrity said that the assessment paper gave “insufficient reasons for abandoning a 2°C limit.” [83]

“Geoengineering means deliberately manipulating the Earth’s climate. It seems like something from science fiction. But it makes sense to think of it as a prudent and affordable insurance policy,” Lomborg writes.

According to Lomborg, renewable energy is too expensive, and this is the reason that “Climate summit after climate summit has failed to affect global temperatures.” [80]

“Solar and wind power are still too expensive and inefficient to replace our reliance on fossil fuels. The prevailing approach, embodied by the Paris climate agreement, requires governments to try to force immature, uncompetitive green technologies on the world. That’s hugely expensive and inefficient,” he writes.

According to Lomborg, “the [Paris] agreement will cost a fortune, but do little to reduce global warming.” He later describes the Paris agreement as “the wrong solution to a real problem,” suggesting that instead of reducing greenhouse gas emissions we should look at research and development in energy technology. [79]

“The U.S. already shows the way. With its pursuit of fracking, making it safer and more efficient every year, America has drastically reduced the cost of natural gas. This momentous switch from coal to lower-CO2 gas as a source of energy has done far more to drive down carbon dioxide emissions than any recent government climate policy,” he writes.

While Lomborg says “this doesn’t mean that global warming isn’t real, or that world leaders and scientists shouldn’t tackle the adverse effects of climate change,” he accuses journalists of “hype and exaggeration.” [72]

In September 2016, The Guardian reported first-hand accounts of Marshall Islands residents who had been directly affected by sea level changes. They noted that about a fifth of the population had left the islands between 1999 and 2011. [74]

According to Lomborg, “doom-mongering” from issues like the Marshall Islands “makes us panic and seize upon the wrong responses to global warming.” He argues the Paris climate agreement “will slow the world’s economic growth to force a shift to inefficient green energy sources” and will “achieve almost nothing.” [72]

September 16, 2016

Bjorn Lomborg writes in The Telegraph that “one of the key benefits of the vote to leave the European Union is that Britain will not longer have to cooperate with overzealous regulations on shale gas extraction, or fracking, which has the potential to transform the energy market.” Lomborg adds that “We need to ditch our unrealistic expectations for renewables” because “A much better course is now possible: to focus on cheaper gas through fracking.” [71]

June 19, 2016

Bjorn Lomborg appeared on CBC radio, where he discussed why he believes there are “a lot of positives to global warming,” although the long-term negatives would outweigh those positives. Audio below. [70]

“[H]alf the world's area has greened because of global warming. So we're basically seeing a gigantic greening […]” Lomborg says. [70]

He also argues that global warming will reduce temperature-related deaths: [70]

“Another issue: most people die from cold deaths, not heat deaths. And so when temperatures increase, we're going to see about 400,000 more heat deaths because of global warming by mid-century, you hear a lot about those, but you're probably going to see 1.8 million fewer cold deaths.” [70]

According to Lomborg, implementing policies to combat climate change right now “end up doing a lot less good than we could do if we were a lot more rational about it.” He cites the Paris Agreement as an example of doing “Basically nothing, for a lot of money.” [70]

“While the USGCRP report is based on thousands of scientific publications, Lomborg cherry-picked only a few to support his case that 1) 'cold kills many more people than heat' and 2) 'climate change will reduce the number of cold days' and 'that will cut the total number of cold-related deaths.'” the open letter reads. [21]

Do electric cars really help the environment? President Obama thinks so. So does Leonardo DiCaprio. And many others.

The argument goes like this:

Regular cars run on gasoline, a fossil fuel that pumps CO2 straight out of the tailpipe and into the atmosphere. Electric cars run on electricity. They don’t burn any gasoline at all. No gas; no CO2. In fact, electric cars are often advertised as creating “zero emissions.” But do they really? Let’s take a closer look.

First, there’s the energy needed to produce the car. More than a third of the lifetime carbon-dioxide emissions from an electric car comes from the energy used make the car itself, especially the battery. The mining of lithium, for instance, is not a green activity. When an electric car rolls off the production line, it’s already been responsible for more than 25,000 pounds of carbon-dioxide emission. The amount for making a conventional car: just 16,000 pounds.

But that’s not the end of the CO2 emissions. Because while it’s true that electric cars don’t run on gasoline, they do run on electricity, which, in the U.S. is often produced by another fossil fuel – coal. As green venture capitalist Vinod Khosla likes to point out, “Electric cars are coal-powered cars.”

The most popular electric car, the Nissan Leaf, over a 90,000-mile lifetime will emit 31 metric tons of CO2, based on emissions from its production, its electricity consumption at average U.S. fuel mix and its ultimate scrapping.

A comparable Mercedes CDIA160 over a similar lifetime will emit just 3 tons more across its production, diesel consumption and ultimate scrapping. The results are similar for a top-line Tesla, the king of electric cars. It emits about 44 tons, which is only 5 tons less than a similar Audi A7 Quattro.

So throughout the full life of an electric car, it will emit just three to five tons less CO2. In Europe, on its European Trading System, it currently costs $7 to cut one ton of CO2. So the entire climate benefit of an electric car is about $35. Yet the U.S. federal government essentially provides electric car buyers with a subsidy of up to $7,500.

Paying $7,500 for something you could get for $35 is a very poor deal. And that doesn’t include the billions more in federal and state grants, loans and tax write-offs that go directly to battery and electric-car makers

The other main benefit from electric cars is supposed to be lower pollution. But remember Vinod Khosla’s observation “Electric cars are coal-powered cars.”

Yes, it might be powered by coal, proponents will say, but unlike the regular car, coal plant emissions are far away from the city centers where most people live and where damage from air pollution is greatest. However, new research in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences found that while gasoline cars pollute closer to home, coal-fired power actually pollutes more – a lot more.

How much more?

Well, the researchers estimate that if the U.S. has 10% more gasoline cars in 2020, 870 more people will die each year from the additional air pollution. If the U.S. has 10% more electric vehicles powered on the average U.S. electricity mix, 1,617 more people will die every year from the extra pollution. Twice as many.

But of course electricity from renewables like solar and wind creates energy for electric cars without CO2. Won’t the perceived rapid ramp-up of these renewables make future electric cars much cleaner? Unfortunately, this is mostly wishful thinking. Today, the U.S. gets 14% of its electric power from renewables. In 25 years, Obama’s U.S. Energy Information Administration estimates that number will have gone up just 3 percentage points to 17%. Meanwhile, those fossil fuels that generate 65% of U.S. electricity today will still generate about 64% of it in 2040.

While electric-car owners may cruise around feeling virtuous, the reality is that the electric car cuts almost no CO2, costs taxpayers a fortune, and, surprisingly, generates more air pollution than traditional gasoline cars.

I’m Bjørn Lomborg, president of the Copenhagen Consensus Center.

According to their website, PragerU's mission is to “spread what we call 'Americanism' through the power of the Internet. Our five-minute videos are conservative sound bites that clarify profoundly significant and uniquely American concepts for more than 100 million people each year.” They focus on “Judeo-Christian” values including “freedom of speech, a free press, free markets and a strong military to protect and project those values.”[24]

In a new paper, Lomborg argued that pledges made ahead of the United Nations climate change summit in Paris would only reduce global warming by 0.17°C by 2100. [88]

“Paris is being sold as the summit where we can help ‘heal the planet’ and ‘save the world’. It is no such thing. If all nations keep all their promises, temperatures will be cut by just 0.05°C (0.09°F). Even if every government on the planet not only keeps every Paris promise, reduces all emissions by 2030, and shifts no emissions to other countries, but also keeps these emission reductions throughout the rest of the century, temperatures will be reduced by just 0.17°C (0.3°F) by the year 2100,” Lomborg commented in a press release. [88]

Bob Ward of the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment published early criticism of Lomborg's work. According to Ward's full commentary, accepted for publication in the same journal as Lomborg's paper, “Projections of global mean surface temperature for the period up to 2100 are based on cumulative annual global emissions of greenhouse gases up to the end of the century. While Lomborg (2015) purports to analyse the temperature changes associated with policies affecting emissions up to 2030, the author fails to acknowledge that the temperature projections to 2100 are determined primarily by assumptions that are made about cumulative annual global emissions over the 70-year period after 2030, rather than cumulative annual emissions during the period up to 2030.” [89], [90]

“The reality is that even after two decades of climate talks, we get a meagre 0.5% of our total global energy consumption from solar and wind energy, according to the leading authority, the International Energy Agency (IEA). And 25 years from now, even with a very optimistic scenario, envisioning everyone doing all that they promise in Paris, the IEA expects that we will get just 2.4 per cent from solar and wind.”

RenewEconomyearlier countered this claim, citing the International Energy Agency (the same source that Lomborg refers to). According to RenewEconomy, the IEA's reports show that “wind and solar will overtake coal as the biggest source of electricity by around 2030, and by 2040 will provide more than 8,200 terrawatt hours of electricity a year – twice as much as coal.” [28]

Paulo Frankl, the IEA's own head of renewable energy, also took issue with Lomborg's statement: [28]

“That is absolute rubbish,” Frankl told RenewEconomy at a side-event at the Paris climate talks. [28]

Frankl point to graphs from the recent World Energy Outlook, the ones that show that the IEA, itself criticized for a conservative outlook on wind and solar, expected that wind and solar will provide 27 per cent of global electricity demand by 2040 in its most optimistic scenario. [28]

One of the most persistent claims in the climate debate is that global warming leads to more extreme weather. This is a common concern expressed by those who fear a dangerously warming planet. President Barack Obama did so eloquently in his 2013 State of the Union Address when he talked about “the devastating impact of raging fires, and crippling drought, and more powerful storms.” Many others have offered similar sentiments.

Global warming is a problem that needs to be addressed, but exaggeration doesn’t help. It often distracts us from simple, cheaper and smarter solutions. To find those solutions, let’s address the three horsemen of the climate apocalypse to which President Obama referred.

Historical analysis of wildfires around the world shows that since 1950 their numbers have decreased globally by 15%. Estimates published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences shows that even with global warming, the level of wildfires will continue to decline until midcentury and won't resume on the level of 1950 – the worst for fire – before the end of the century.

Claiming that droughts are a consequence of global warming is also wrong. The world has not seen a general increase in drought. A study published in Nature in March 2014 shows globally that there has been little change in drought over the past 60 years.

The U.N. Climate Panel in 2012 concluded: “Some regions of the world have experienced more intense and longer droughts, in particular in southern Europe and West Africa, but in some regions droughts have become less frequent, less intense, or shorter, for example, in central North America and northwestern Australia.”

And finally, the third horseman: hurricanes. Global hurricane activity today, measured by total energy, hasn’t been lower since the 1970s.

While it is likely that we will see somewhat stronger (but fewer) storms as climate change continues, damages will be lower because we’ll be better adapted. A March 2012 Nature study shows that the global damage cost from hurricanes will be 0.02% of gross domestic product by 2100 – down 50% from today’s 0.04%.

Let me make this clear: this does not mean that climate change isn't an issue. It means that exaggerating the threat concentrates resources in the wrong areas.

Consider hurricanes (though similar points hold for wildfire and drought). If the aim is to reduce storm damage, then first focus on resilience – better building codes and better enforcement of those codes. Ending subsidies for hurricane insurance to discourage building in vulnerable zones would also help, as would investing in better infrastructure (from stronger levees to higher-capacity sewers).

These solutions are quick and comparatively cheap. Most important, they would diminish future hurricane damage, whether climate-induced or not. Had New York and New Jersey focused resources on building sea walls and adding storm doors to the subway system and making simple fixes like porous pavements, Hurricane Sandy would have caused much less damage.

In the long run, the world needs to cut carbon dioxide because it causes global warming. But if the main effort to cut emissions is through subsidies for chic renewables like wind and solar power, virtually no good will be achieved – at very high cost.

The cost of climate policies just for the European Union – intended to reduce emissions by 2020 to 20% below 1990 levels – are estimated at about $250 billion annually, or about $20 trillion over the century. And the benefits, when estimated using a standard climate model, will reduce temperatures only by an immeasurable one-tenth of a degree Fahrenheit by the end of the century.

Even in 2040, under its most optimistic scenario, the International Energy Agency estimates that just 2.2% of the world's energy will come from wind and solar. As is the case today, almost 80% will still come from fossil fuels. As long as green energy is more expensive than fossil fuels, growing consumer markets like those in China and India will continue mostly to be powered by them.

Solar, wind, and other renewables are still inefficient because they require subsidies of more than $120 billion a year. And even in 2040, they won’t be efficient. The International Energy Agency estimates they will still require more than $200 billion dollars annually.

Instead of pouring money into subsidies for existing, inefficient wind and solar energy, we’d be far better off supporting research and development of green energy technologies to make them cheaper, faster.

When innovation eventually makes green energy as cheap or cheaper than fossil fuel energy, everyone will use it, including China and India. Until then, let’s cool the fear mongering and make practical decisions that will help people now.

The Guardian reported in December, 2016, referring to new documents that had come to light, that the Australian government had signed an agreement to make a $640,000 grant to Lomborg's Copenhagen Consensus Center nine months after plans to establish the Center had been abandoned. $482,000 of the funding was set aside for professional fees including research, “outreach,” and forums, according to a breakdown of the costs. [77]

February 1, 2015

Bjorn Lomborg writes an opinion piece in The Wall Street Journal titled, “The Alarming Thing About Climate Alarmism.” Lomborg writes the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's (UNIPCC) most recent report “found that in the previous 15 years temperatures had risen 0.09 degrees Fahrenheit,” and that “the average of all models expected 0.8 degrees [Fahrenheit]. So we're seeing about 90% less temperature rise than expected.” [36]

Later on in the opinion piece, Lomborg states that climate “alarmism has encouraged the pursuit of a one-sided climate policy of trying to cut carbon emissions by subsidizing wind farms and solar panels,” referring to renewable energy policies and technology as “expensive, feel-good measures that will have an imperceptible climate impact.” [36]

ClimateFeedback.org explains the negative evaluation: “The main reason for this negative evaluation is that the author [Bjorn Lomborg] practices cherry-picking: he [Lomborg] is selecting limited evidence to support his thesis that 'much of the data about climate change are…encouraging'. The evidence provided is insufficient: several examples are either inaccurate or only speak about one aspect of the problem, ignoring much of the published literature on the subject.” [36]

October 3, 2014

Bjorn Lomborg publishes an article in TIME's “Ideas” section titled, “How Indoor Stoves Can Help Solve Global Poverty.” Lomborg writes that “rich countries are already finding the move away from coal and oil to be a difficult one, and there are no easy answers for developing economies,” leading Lomborg to ask “today's crucial question,” which is, “what should the world prioritize?” [37]

Lomborg contends there are some “targets we should be wary of,” like the doubling of the World's renewable energy output, which he describes as “intermittent and unpredictable,” and its cost, “likely to be higher than the benefits.” [37]

Lomborg was quoted in an a web-piece entitled, “Earth Daze,” written by news correspondent John Stossel in Real Clear Politics, “The amazing number that most people haven't heard is, if you take all the solar panels and all the wind turbines in the world, they have (eliminated) less CO2 than what U.S. fracking (cracking rocks below ground to extract oil and natural gas) managed to do.” [39]

Stossel writes that even if America reaches Obama's “absurd” pledge to put 1,000,000 electric vehicles on the road by 2015, the impacts of climate change would only be delayed by “one hour,” according to Lomborg, and the mitigation measure was merely a “symbolic act.” [39]

Lomborg publishes an op-ed in The New York Times titled, “The Poor Need Cheap Fossil Fuels,” where he advocates maintaining the status quo of “reliable, low-cost fossil fuels, at least until we can make a global transition to a greener energy future.” [9]

Within it, he describes a “scorecard spanning 150 years,” developed by him and “21 of the world's top economists,” to see, through standard “economic valuations,” if the world was “doing better or worse.” In the closing statement of the piece, Lomborg writes, “realists should now embrace the view that the world is doing much better … We should guide our future attention not on the basis of the scariest stories or loudest pressure groups, but on objective assessments of where we can do the most good.” [40][41],[42]

October 7, 2013

Lomborg is quoted in a ThinkProgress article explaining “why the Copenhagen Consensus Center is launching the American Prosperity Consensus project in partnership with Slate”: [41]

“In 2040, the United States will differ greatly from the country we know today. Demographics trends will continue to reshape it, making it an older, more ethnically diverse nation. It will also become a denser, more urban population, which will affect the way we eat, work, shop, and relax. The policies the U.S. pursues at home will also affect the role that the nation plays in the world as a dynamic society and economy. These internal and external pressures create the need for robust policy solutions that address the country’s most vexing challenges and transcend today’s hyperpartisan, short-term decision making … The American Prosperity Consensus is designed as a competition of sorts. After we determine the most pressing issues according to reader input, we will ask economists and academics to propose policy solutions that best address these challenges while enabling America’s prosperity to continue and expand. With your help and with the guidance of Nobel laureates, we will create a list of top proposals. A final ranking will emerge from ongoing online debates and from the American Prosperity Summit, to be held in May 2014.” [41]

Environmental communications and public health expert Robert J. Brulle, from Drexel University, told ThinkProgress that it appeared Slate has decided to no longer engage in “serious journalism,” as seen in the “gimmick” with Bjorn Lomborg. [41]

“Global warming is real and it is something we need to fix, but we should fix it smartly and not in a very, very costly way as we are doing right now,” Lomborg said in the interview. [87]

“When you say, you know, we're creating green jobs. Sure. If you give lots and lots of subsidies, you're inevitably going to get jobs. But where are you going to pay it from?” [87]

November 12, 2010

Lomborg appeared in the documentary film Cool It which focused on his views regarding climate policy where he suggests “that there's a well-financed effort underfoot to spin the failure of climate action into a new political strategy for high-tech mega-investments.” Lomborg said that “independent investors” financed the film. [43]

In the opinion piece, Lomborg links back to the Copenhagen Consensus Center's research results, which were conducted by an “Expert Panel of five world-class economists - including three recipients of the Nobel Prize;” their duty: “to form conclusions about which solution to climate change is the most promising.” The panel concluded, “the most effective use of resources would be to invest immediately in researching marine cloud whitening technology,” a form of geoengineering. [44]

In 2007 Lomborg published his second major book skeptical about climate change titled Cool It. His book tour in Canada was sponsored by the Fraser Institute, an organization which has received $120,000 from ExxonMobil since 1998. [51], [52]

Alanna Mitchell, the Science Reporter for the Globe and Mail wrote a review:

“It would be possible to go point by point through the many similar flaws in each of Lomborg’s arguments, but frankly, the book is too pitiful to merit it. It’s not that his analysis is controversial - that would be fun - but that it is deeply dissatisfying, ignorant and shallow. I remember wondering, after I interviewed Lomborg, whether he was intellectually dishonest or just not very bright. Cool It has convinced me that it doesn’t matter. Lomborg has now proved beyond a doubt that he is incapable of contributing anything of merit to scientific discourse.” [53]

“The book is riddled with small inaccuracies, and because it displays a pervasive bias in its coverage and evaluations of climate issues. To begin with, Lomborg has a weak grasp of some of the essential details and commits elementary mistakes, with little or no citation of sources that would explain his results.” [54]

He promoted the findings of his Copenhagen Consensus project, which earlier that year had ranked projects on climate change as the lowest on a list of 17 potential issues to spend money on. [55]

2004

Lomborg hosted the Copenhagen Consensus conference, partially funded by the Danish government. Eight economists selected by Lomborg were asked to prioritize ten global problems based on a hypothetical budget of $50 billion and a timeline of five years. Based on those constraints, the panel concluded that climate change was the least cost-effective area to invest public money.

The conference was hosted through the Danish Environmental Assessment Institute, of which Lomborg was the director. When the conference was announced, five of the seven board members resigned en masse in a dispute over the event.

Professor John Quiggin is a Senior Research Fellow of the Australian Research Council, based at the Australian National University and Queensland University of Technology. He wrote a series of articles critical of the process, participants and perceived bias of the conference. [56], [57]

He concludes that “the Copenhagen Consensus project was created as a political stunt. It was designed, in every detail, to produce a predetermined outcome. Having got the desired outcome, the organizer has shown little or no interest in pursuing any of the other issues raised by the project.”

Jeffery Sachs was also critical of the Copenhagen Consensus conference in his analysis (PDF) for the prestigious journal Nature. [58]

Tom Burke also wrote a scathing review of the Copenhagen Consensus, titled “This is neither scepticism nor science - just nonsense” in The Guardian. [59]

“The publication is deemed clearly contrary to the standards of good scientific practice…there has been such perversion of the scientific message in the form of systematically biased representation that the objective criteria for upholding scientific dishonesty … have been met.” [60]

Lomborg later had this overturned after appealing to the Danish Government, who was sympathetic to his message, ordered the body to review this decision. [61]

Scientific American later published their own 10-page article, written by four leading experts, that was critical of The Skeptical Environmentalist and which described Lomborg's work as “deeply flawed.” [62]

They further described Lomborg's text as having “misrepresented the actual positions of environmentalists and scientists” with an analysis that was “marred by invalidating errors that include a narrow, biased reading of the literature, an inadequate understanding of the science, and quotations taken out of context.” [62]

John P. Holdren, one of the Scientific American authors noted: “It is instructive that [Lomborg] apparently did not feel he could manage an adequate response by himself (In this, at least, he was correct. But he could not manage it with help, either).” [63]

For his part, Lomborg sent a plea to his supporters asking for help in forming a rebuttal. It read:

“Naturally, I plan to write a rebuttal to be put on my web-site. However, I would also love your input to the issues — maybe you can contest some of the arguments in the Scientific American, alone or together with other academics. Perhaps you have good ideas to counter a specific argument. Perhaps you know of someone else that might be ideal to talk to or get to write a counter-piece.” [63]

“Lomborg’s book is seriously flawed and fails to meet basic standards of credible scientific analysis. The authors note how Lomborg consistently misuses, misrepresents or misinterprets data to greatly underestimate rates of species extinction, ignore evidence that billions of people lack access to clean water and sanitation, and minimize the extent and impacts of global warming due to the burning of fossil fuels and other human-caused emissions of heat-trapping gases. Time and again, these experts find that Lomborg’s assertions and analyses are marred by flawed logic, inappropriate use of statistics and hidden value judgments. He uncritically and selectively cites literature—often not peer-reviewed— that supports his assertions, while ignoring or misinterpreting scientific evidence that does not. His consistently flawed use of scientific data is, in Peter Gleick’s words 'unexpected and disturbing in a statistician.'” [64]

Dr. Peter Gleick, a renowned American scientist, wrote another critical review of Lomborg's Skeptical Environmentalist book in the magazine Environment. Dr. Gleick's review, “Is the Skeptic All Wet?” catalogued numerous errors in Lomborg's methods, data and assumptions, particularly focused on water issues. [66]

“Perspective on Climate Change” (PDF), Testimony prepared by Bjorn Lomborg for the Subcommittee on Energy and Air Quality joint hearing with the Subcommittee on Energy and Environment of the Committee on Science and Technology on Wednesday March 21, 2007. Archived .pdf on file at Desmog.

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